Part Two – A Free Press is Essential to Democracy

350 Editorials Speak Out for a Free Press….A couple of those editorials are below emphasizing the importance of a free press, but if you wish to read more go to any of these newspapers: newspaper-editorials-trump-list.  But for a perspective, first grasp the real calamity of not having a free press.  Click on this link press-advocate-trumps-anti-press-rhetoric-emboldens-other-countries to see Trump’s autocratic ways & attacks on the press are setting examples worldwide, which serve to put democracies in danger & give rise to dictatorships.  As journalists’ lives & freedoms are increasingly endangered, it puts the free press in danger throughout the world, which in turn puts freedom itself in danger.  Let me emphasize again & I can’t say it strongly enough, a free press is indispensable to democracy!: why-a-free-press-matters & also a-free-press-works-for-all-of-us.

Press freedom was not invented in the United States, but there are few nations in which the importance of an independent press has been so closely woven into its long history. This great American tradition of civic respect for truth and truth-telling is now under threat. Donald Trump is not the first US president to attack the press or to feel unfairly treated by it. But he is the first who appears to have a calculated and consistent policy of undermining, delegitimising and even endangering the press’s work. As one editor has put it: we’re not at war with the Trump administration, we’re at work. Mr Trump’s sweeping abuse of the press is grimly familiar now. He calls the US press “enemies of the people”. He accuses it – the instances now run into hundreds – of producing “fake news” and being “frankly disgusting”. He recently called the press “dangerous and sick”, and charged that they can “cause war”. He has called journalists “the lowest form of humanity”. The former FBI chief James Comey, later fired by Mr Trump, said the president asked him to consider jailing journalists for publishing leaks. His administration has removed reminders to respect press freedom from its internal manuals. He singles out four news organisations in particular – CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times and the Washington Post – insulting them in public (as he did at his Chequers press conference) and recently barring a CNN reporter from White House media events.

 

Inescapably, this campaign has consequences. Public opinion, especially among Mr Trump’s most committed supporters, has become harsher in its views. Almost half of Republican voters (44%) believe the president should be able to close news organisations for “bad behaviour”, according to a recent poll. In another poll this week a majority of Republican voters (51%) say that the news media are “the enemy of the people”. The anti-media mood at some Trump rallies has been intimidating. Social media trolling, violent abuse and threats to journalists (especially sexual threats to women journalists) have reached unprecedented levels. The United Nations human rights commissioner warned this week that Mr Trump’s attacks on the press are “very close to incitement to violence”. In June, five staff members at the Capital Gazette in Maryland were shot dead by a local man with a local grievance. They may not be the last. It is not the press’s job to save the United States from Mr Trump. It is the press’s job to report, delve, analyse and scrutinise as best it can and without fear. The press has many faults. It can be self-regarding. Far worse, in Mr Trump’s America, some parts of the media are partisan outlets which show a cavalier disregard for truth: the president has embraced these. But a free press must call out intimidation and incitement when it exists. And it must do what it can to preserve respect for the facts and for balanced judgment. In short, it must do its job. Mr Trump’s insults and incitements are a calculated danger to that, and to the respect, civility and dialogue that should exist between the press and its readers. The Guardian stands with the US press in its efforts to maintain the objectivity and the moral boundaries that this president – like so many others in much more dangerous parts of the world – is doing so much to destroy.

Trump has a knack of accusing his opponents with the very same offenses he is guilty of himself, so it was interesting he accused these hundreds of newspapers standing up for a free press as “collusion.”  He also called them the “opposition party.”  In the past he’s also referred to the media as trump-and-the-enemies-of-the-people.  This op-ed also makes sense: boston-globe-donald-trump-free-press-editorials.  Another of those editorials is seen in free-press-local-journalism-news-donald-trump, with here being the beginning to it:

In 1787, the year the Constitution was adopted, Thomas Jefferson famously wrote to a friend, “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” That’s how he felt before he became president, anyway. Twenty years later, after enduring the oversight of the press from inside the White House, he was less sure of its value. “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper,” he wrote. “Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.” Jefferson’s discomfort was, and remains, understandable. Reporting the news in an open society is an enterprise laced with conflict. His discomfort also illustrates the need for the right he helped enshrine. As the founders believed from their own experience, a well-informed public is best equipped to root out corruption and, over the long haul, promote liberty and justice.

 

“Public discussion is a political duty,” the Supreme Court said in 1964. That discussion must be “uninhibited, robust, and wide-open,” and “may well include vehement, caustic and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.” In 2018, some of the most damaging attacks are coming from government officials. Criticizing the news media — for underplaying or overplaying stories, for getting something wrong — is entirely right. News reporters and editors are human, and make mistakes. Correcting them is core to our job. But insisting that truths you don’t like are “fake news” is dangerous to the lifeblood of democracy. And calling journalists the “enemy of the people” is dangerous, period. These attacks on the press are particularly threatening to journalists in nations with a less secure rule of law and to smaller publications in the United States, already buffeted by the industry’s economic crisis. And yet the journalists at those papers continue to do the hard work of asking questions and telling the stories that you otherwise wouldn’t hear. 

The verbal sparring between my father and Sam Donaldson of ABC, or Helen Thomas of UPI, is well documented. But there was never vitriol, there was never name-calling, and if anyone had attacked a journalist, my father would have been the first to stand in the way. I’ve tried to imagine what my father would have done if people attending a political speech of his had turned to the press and raised their middle fingers, hurled obscenities or physically menaced the reporters who were there doing their jobs. I found it difficult to conjure the image, and then I realized why. It simply wouldn’t have happened. The person on the podium, the person everyone has gathered to see, sets the tone. President Trump has quite successfully set today’s tone. He expertly stirred up the anger that was already simmering in the people who support him, and then he lit a match to it. He gave them an enemy — always a useful tactic. And naming the press as the enemy has precedents: Many tyrants have employed it to their advantage. Trump may not read much, but I’ll bet he knows that. Those of us who are horrified by the vilification of the news media, those of us who cringe at the sight of angry mobs jeering at the cordoned-off journalists at Trump rallies, far outnumber those who are swept up by this ugly passion. We are still in the majority. But if we are silent, if we don’t speak up, if we don’t raise our voices and say, “This is not America,” it won’t matter that we are in the majority. Silence didn’t create this country; brazen, unwavering commitment did. And one of those commitments was to a free press — one not controlled or hampered by a demagogue who has a good day only when he’s being flattered.

Rubin points out polling where support for Mueller has risen in response to & despite Trump’s vitriolic onslaught, as seen in these excerpts from trumps-ranting-about-the-russia-probe-isnt-winning-over-voters.  And in the final line below, it’s obvious she has the GOP base pegged (illogical, unpersuadable, gullible):

President Trump’s daily outbursts about the Russia investigation — Witch hunt! Hoax! — and attempts to smear law enforcement aren’t fooling the large majority of Americans. By a margin of 55 percent to 34 percent, Americans disapprove of his handling of the investigation, according to a new CNN poll. Moreover, “[Special counsel Robert S.] Mueller’s ratings have also rebounded in this poll, with 47% now saying they approve of his handling of the Russia investigation, up from 41% in June. That shift stems from a shift among Democrats — almost three-quarters now approve of Mueller’s work, 72%, up 10 points since June.” Asked whether they think Russian interference in 2016 is a serious matter, 58 percent say it is a serious matter that should be fully investigated; 37 percent say it is an effort to discredit Trump.

 

Trump’s credibility is low — 56 percent say most or all of what he says about the Russia probe is untrue; 37 percent say most or all is true. By a margin of 56 percent to 38 percent, people think Trump interfered with the investigation. Some 70 percent think he should testify under oath; only 25 percent do not. Finally, 57 percent think Trump knew people associated with his campaign had contacts with suspected Russian operatives, while 36 percent did not. It is far from clear that any evidence, no matter how detailed and solid, will persuade a significant segment of Americans that Trump has, in effect, betrayed his country, lied to them and obstructed justice. The large majority of those who persist in believing the investigation is in fact a “witch hunt” are unlikely to be talked out of their cultlike support for whatever Trump does or says. These are the illogical unpersuadables who gobble up every cockamamie explanation and buy into virtually any conspiracy theory so long as it exonerates the president. Alas, the latter description — illogical, unpersuadable, gullible — describes the lion’s share of Republicans these days.

But what if public opinion about Trump and the Russia probe is a lot simpler than we think? What if the story is that large majorities think Trump is probably guilty of some sort of wrongdoing; believe that Mueller’s investigation is legitimately in keeping with the rule of law and is pursuing matters that are important to the public interest; want Trump to face questioning over these matters; don’t like Trump’s constant attacks on the investigation; and believe Trump has been trying to interfere with the probe and has been steadily lying about it all along?

 

*Only 34 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the Russia investigation, vs. 55 percent who disapprove.

*58 percent say this is a serious matter that should be investigated, vs. only 37 percent who think it’s mainly an effort to discredit Trump.

*56 percent say Trump has interfered with the investigation, vs. only 38 percent who say he has not.

*Only 37 percent say the things Trump has said publicly about the investigation are true, vs. 56 percent who say they are false.

*70 percent say Trump should testify to Mueller, vs. only 25 percent who say he should not.

*57 percent say Trump knew about contacts between his campaign operatives and Russians, vs. only 36 percent who say he did not.

 

Trump is losing every single public argument about the Mueller probe. His latest, in a tweet citing Judicial Watch, is that the firing of former FBI agent Peter Strzok, who authored texts critical of Trump, shows that the “fundamental underpinnings of the investigation were corrupt.” This is a lie: The inspector general’s report into all this actually found that the FBI decision not to prosecute Hillary Clinton was untainted by bias or politics, completely laying waste to Trump’s narrative. Regardless, this is only the latest in a long string of things that was supposed to “give Trump fodder” to disqualify the investigation, to use that deeply misleading and self-reinforcing journalistic cliche. But the fodder is failing, and so are all his lies. Only small minorities believe the probe is a witch hunt; think he hasn’t interfered in it; believe he’s telling the truth about these matters; and don’t think he should testify. And those minorities are largely dominated by Republicans: In all these cases, independents — who matter in midterms — are tilted against him, a trend that other polls have also demonstrated.

 

I’m not claiming the Mueller probe will necessarily give a big lift to Democratic efforts to take the House. My view is that Trump’s handling of it is part of a broader story about Trumpian self-dealing and corruption and his reliance on the House GOP to shield him from accountability and allow him to act with impunity on many fronts. And the precise impact of the Russia story as part of that broader narrative is hard to gauge. But there is no evidence Trump’s lies are likely to give the GOP a boost in keeping the House. The Russia story is probably hurting Republicans more than it is helping. Which means that on this score, Trump isn’t “winning” at all.

What is wrong with these people?

Our country & democracy is being attacked by a foreign enemy!  Maybe not the visible horrors of bombs & bullets, but the insidious invasion of cyberattacks & bots putting lies on social media.  Yet millions in the GOP base don’t care!  Maybe they secretly favor a governing system ruled by corrupt oligarchs like Russia has.  It only goes to show those who faithfully believe whatever Trump & the echo say are afflicted with decrepit thinking, as seen from excerpts in 4-in-10-republicans-think-foreign-election-interference-would-be-a-minor-problem-or-no-problem-at-all: 

American intelligence officials believe that Russian attempts to interfere in U.S. politics are ongoing. What became obvious during the 2016 campaign is recurring — continuing, really — with the apparent aim of introducing discord and disruption in the electoral process. More than a quarter of Americans said it would be a crisis for the country. Nearly three-quarters said it would be at least a major problem. But, again, that wasn’t the case among Republicans. Among Republicans, more than 4 in 10 said it would be, at worst, a minor problem. One in 8 Republicans said it wouldn’t be a problem at all. Among Trump supporters, that figure jumped to about 1 in 7. How widespread is that? There are about 101 million Republicans and Republican-leaning independents in the country, according to Gallup’s latest estimates. That means that about 42 million Republicans don’t think interference in 2018 would be anything more than a minor issue. Of that group, 12.1 million think such interference wouldn’t be a problem at all.

We’re still cursed by the remnants of the Tea Party

The evil cult of Trump is really an offshoot of the Tea Party.  The excerpts taken from what-happened-to-the-tea-party show the reasons & path taken by this deranged movement as they’ve devolved these past few years, but the nihilistic insanity at the very core of their mindset remains:

Just a few years ago, the Tea Party was a dominant force in American politics, but you don’t hear much about it these days. It hasn’t gone away, it just morphed into something else. Donald Trump was born out of the Tea Party. Trump’s dedicated supporters are many of the same folks who made the Tea Party the dominant force in American politics in 2010. Like Trump, the Tea Party was never overwhelmingly popular but it did have a strongly committed base. Less than half (41 percent) of the people who voted in 2010 said they were supporters of the Tea Party. Coincidently, Trump’s job rating usually hovers at the same level. The issues that fired up the Tea Party are the same things that Trump pushes as president: an anti-establishment view, hostility towards immigrants, opposition to ObamaCare and hatred of federal budget deficits. It was the Tea Party fanned the flames that led to big GOP victories in 2010. The difference in 2018 is that Democrats are engaged as much Republicans were back then.

 

One of the curiosities of the 2018 midterm election is national polls show Democrats motivated to vote in the same way Tea Party supporters were in 2010. A June CNN Poll indicated that Democrats are much more enthusiastic about voting this November than Republicans. Why are Republicans so blasé about the midterms? One reason may be that Trump hasn’t delivered on the promises he made in 2016 to the acolytes of the Tea Party even though the GOP controls the U.S. House and Senate. Trump hasn’t got the money he needs to build his wall. But demography is destiny and a wall on the Mexican border won’t stop the face of America from changing because of birth rates that are much higher than for Hispanic and Asian Americans than they are for Anglos. ObamaCare is still the law of the land, even in its weakened condition. And its pale substitute, TrumpCare died a miserable death in a GOP controlled Republican U.S. Senate. Because of tax cuts for the GOP’s corporate masters, the federal debt has swelled to astronomic proportions. The tax cut was ambrosia to big business and the 1 percent but it has done next to nothing for downtrodden white voters who punched Trump’s ticket to the White House.

 

The big issues on the radar screen haven’t changed much since 2010 and 2016. Distrust of Washington, immigration, health care and the economy are still on the front burner. All these issues favored the GOP and Trump; now the same problems will come back to haunt the president and congressional Republicans. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton played the role of swamp creature in 2010 and in 2016. Trump has become is the creature from the black lagoon because he made the swamp more fetid than it already was. Before, voters wanted to get rid of ObamaCare; now voters are angry that the GOP weakened the Affordable Care Act without replacing it. The move of populists and progressives into the Democratic Party made a regionally based states’ rights party into a dominant party for a generation. But transition works both ways. The question is whether the Republican Party will develop or devolve from the Tea Party.

Trump Cult enabled by Echo

As seen in excerpts below from its-trumps-party-yes-but-its-also-conservative-medias, we find explanations how Fox, Breitbart & the rest of the echo have created this monster, allowing the election of an autocratic demagogue to the highest office with a major party being co-opted into their cult.  That millions of conservatives have their thoughts & mindset given over to this delusional far-right media, it’s why the GOP base have bought into the litany of lies, distortions & conspiracies.  As the song says at the bottom of part 3, drums keep pounding a rhythm to the brain, la de da de de, la de da de da: 

Here — “solidarity in grievance” — we get to the heart of the issue. The shift isn’t really that the GOP is the party of Trump. The shift is that the Republican base has embraced the sort of politics that Trump (and Bachmann before him) were good at: sharply partisan rhetoric that is at times only loosely tied to reality. In that sense, it’s not the party of Trump. It’s the party of conservative media. Of Sean Hannity as much as Trump. For conservative media outlets, stoking partisan passion has proved lucrative. Fox News established itself as the counterpoint to the mainstream media and, thanks to a deliberate effort to bolster conservative points of view, is the most trusted news outlet for more than half of Republicans.

During the administration of President Barack Obama, it often seemed that no outrage was too small to air on Fox News or its online properties. At the same time, though, Fox faced pressure from the right as Breitbart News and other more extreme online outlets pushed conservative rhetoric even further. During the 2016 campaign, Breitbart dominated social media sharing on the right, besting Fox News across the board. Trump’s view of political issues was molded by Fox, in particular. Before becoming a candidate, he regularly called in to “Fox and Friends” to offer his insights. As always, his Twitter feed is instructive: Before he ran for president, he tweeted about Fox News more than 600 times, often promoting his own interviews on the network. More than 50 times, he promoted Breitbart.

Trump, because he’s Trump, said what he wanted. And Trump, because his political views were informed by conservative media, wanted to say things that mirrored Fox and Breitbart, messages for which a big chunk of the party’s base was already primed by having consumed the same media. Not every Republican responded to that right off the bat, but enough did that it carried him to success in the Republican primaries. Last August, the Pew Research Center asked Trump supporters what they liked most about how Trump did his job. By 3 to 1, they said they liked his style and approach more than his policies. What worked to sell ads on media sites and television networks also worked to sell Trump’s candidacy and presidency. 

Dems Advantage Grows

Rubin has this to say about it: hanging-on-to-trumps-rabid-base-wont-be-enough & also this-is-how-a-wave-builds.  As for the actual numbers with the midterms closing in, see poll-dems-lead-gop-by-11-on-generic-ballot & also 2018-midterm-election-forecast.  

Coincidence?

In the category of amazing coincidences, I was doing my nightly ritual perusing the newsfeeds, having finished WaPo & had just clicked on the NYTimes page.  Just then I got an automated call for a polling survey about my congressional election (which it’s been a long time since I last got one of those polling calls).  I punched in the number that I approved of my GOP rep Dave Joyce, but true to my word as I’ve been recommending to all of you (since this election is bigger than party), I also hit the number that I’d be voting for his Dem opponent.  So when I hung up the phone & scrolled down the newsfeeds, right away I ran into this article: politics/dave-joyce-trump.  So now I’m seriously reconsidering.

Even more important than putting Dems in Congress, we need GOP reps willing to speak out against Trump.  My rep is one of the very few willing to publicly question Trump other than the GOP reps who are retiring from Congress.  As that article reveals, Joyce is pushing back (although somewhat tepidly, but he can’t alienate the GOP base).  Joyce could help provide cover for other GOP reps to buck Trump when necessary.  So everyone else out there in any other district, I still recommend you vote Dem, unless your GOP rep/candidate shows some spine by not being a parrot for Trump.  Joyce actually gets every single one of my messages, so if he still reads them, he’d likely find these particular comments interesting.  I’d like to think my anti-Trump rants had an influence on him (or it might have more to do with the scare for the GOP in the special election from nearby district Ohio-12).  If I see him at the Geauga County Fair coming up, I may suggest to him if the cult of Trump still pervades after the election, go ahead & get real gutsy by declaring himself an Independent!

Smart Guys 

Here’s a writer I can identify within the next link.  Just like him in the 80’s & 90’s, as a conservative, I was enamored with anything Reagan or Limbaugh said.  Fast-forward to today, the GOP has become the party of Trump, Fox & the rest of the echo-nutballs, so definitely count me (& him) out!: did-i-join-a-movement-that-naturally-attracts-extremists-and-kooks.  Another incredibly smart writer is in here: republicans-abandoned-reagan-caved-trump-ex-gop-chairman.  I rarely praise Fox, but if we pick our spots, some show hosts are actually honest.  No, really, I kid you not!!!  See for yourself in it-is-not-your-show-fox-news-host-shuts-down-former-trump-apologist-katrina-pierson & also shepard-smith-steele-dossier-none-dossier-fox-news-knowledge-has-been-disproven.  I said a couple weeks ago I thought Q was a Russian bot: russian-troll-account-pushed-q-theory-last-year-report.

Not So Smart

Read this for an interesting perspective: i-read-six-sycophantic-pro-trump-books-and-then-i-read-omarosa.  It looks as though the Trump administration is running afoul of ethics rules, giving Fox News preferential treatment & unprecedented access, envisioning them as the state-run TV much like the dictators in Russia & North Korea can count on.  See details from white-house-its-in-public-interest-for-staff-to-skirt-ethics-rules-to-meet-with-fox-news & also inside white-house-waives-ethics-rules-to-allow-top-staffers-access-to-fox-news, they cite from WaPo this unholy alliance:

The revolving door between Fox News and Republican political figures has turned steadily for years, with failed GOP candidates finding a home at the network. But since Donald Trump was elected president, the door has provided a number of former Fox personnel with entree into a government now infused with the cable channel’s fiery sensibility. And with Bill Shine’s appointment this summer to a top job in the White House, the door may finally come to rest. The two worlds have merged into one universe: the Fox News White House. If Donald Trump is running his own touch-and-go reality show from Pennsylvania Avenue, he has finally found in Shine his executive producer.

By now we all should realize, even Fox viewers, that Fox is in the tank for Trump.  And it’s obviously become a two-way street, as Trump tweets & even governs based on what he hears on his favorite Fox shows.  He also consults with some of those show hosts in person.  So Trump & his state-run media only cater to his base.  It’s always been stunning to see when real news breaks, Fox keeps their viewers shielded from it, deflecting over to some boiler-plate story painting Trump in a positive light, shown below from when-trump-faces-negative-story-fox-news-pivots-economy: 

There is perhaps no single person or entity that has done more to sell the economy under President Trump than Fox News. Fox routinely find ways to spin bad, unrelated news about the economy into good, related news about the economy, often blaming the media for its focus on Trump’s scandals and ethics probes. When former FBI director James B. Comey testified in June 2017, Fox Business’ Stuart Varney called the media’s coverage a “disgrace” for not focusing more on the economy. After a February poll showed that most Americans think Trump is a racist, Fox News’ Laura Ingraham pivoted to the economy and asked her panelists, “What’s not to love?” As then-administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency Scott Pruitt faced a litany of investigations in spring 2018, Fox News’ Melissa Francis brushed them aside, instead highlighting reduced EPA regulations. And one day after the Justice Department appointed special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, Varney blamed the media for the drop in the stock market. One Fox guest even alluded to shooting his television out of frustration for Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s lack of support for Trump’s economy. Indeed, Fox has been so anxious to praise Trump for the economy, it has even admitted to deliberately giving the president positive economic coverage.

Tragic Church Stories

The two largest churches throughout the Americas & the Western world, Catholic & Evangelical, are facing perilous times.  Major cultural shifts such as young people leaving the church & changes to cultural norms, not just abortion rights but LGBT rights/gay marriage, are trends undermining church authority/teachings/beliefs.  But aside from such external challenges, the current internal self-inflicted wounds pose the far greater risks.  Catholic dioceses across Pennsylvania are being rocked with a major sexual abuse scandal: grand-jury-report-pennsylvania-details-abuse-catholic-priests.  And the world is increasingly perceiving evangelicals more devoted to an earthly leader with deplorable moral character over a holy heavenly father.